Joseph Maynor

I think they are a negative emotion that is triggered by certain thoughts that arise due to the ego trying to self-correct the system in some way. They're like a whistle-blast of the ego saying it's not happy. The question is, can I learn to ignore those whistle blasts as I walk through my everyday life. I will inquire more.

We need to be careful about saying there is no free-will or that there is free-will. These are beliefs about reality and all beliefs are existentially false. Reality just is. If existence/ non-existence doesn't fly then neither should free-will/ no free-will.

Why assume it's an either or? Why are you so strongly opposed to Leo's thoughts? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If your ears are closed you can't listen. If you can't listen you can't learn. If you can't learn you can't grow. If you don't grok self-mastery you can't get sustainable, consistent, high-quality growth and results. This stuff is a science, I told you. You need to open your mind. Self-mastery is the only strategy that can produce sustainable success in life. Personal development is about mastering that. Make sense? If you can't control yourself, you're gonna be screwing up in life -- It duddn't matter what kind of "success" you become or nutty-artist you aspire to be. There's no end-run around self-mastery. Bite the bullet and accept that. The lower-self wants a quick-fix but there's not one here. Might as well get on board now rather than later. And I wager that eventually you will do that in your life. I see a spark in there that needs some direction to express itself to its full-magnificence. You seem frustrated, like a bum on the street stumbling upon a cannabis joint and then realizing he has no fire-power to set it alight. Dive in brah. Stop playing the role of the sniper-skeptic. That's easy. That's just step #1. I went through that too. You are at beginner step #1. Accept that and be humble. Suck it up. I get it, it sucks to be smart and to be a beginner at something. Growing long, luxurious hair requires a long time spent in the ugly-stage. Open the ears. Watch all of Leo's videos. I watched all of them over 3 times. This stuff takes a lifetime to live into. It's like a king-fu master practicing his routine all day long, and in the evening returning to his little hut to analyze in detail everything he did in his little notebook. That's what personal development is like. One baby-step at a time. One baby-improvement at a time. It's an upward-spiral. Notes discipline themselves into melodies and eventually into songs over the long-view. But you gotta first believe that this is possible for your life. Do you? Kill that limiting-belief if you don't. That might be goal #1 for your personal development plan. Your thoughts are stunting your life in ways that you *can't* even know about yet. But you will eventually if you stay on this journey of personal development. You'll learn all about limiting-beliefs and the harm they cause. And you'll learn how to BE differently in the face of such *limiting-beliefs*. Everything and anything is possible for your life. You can birth yourself out of the marble any way you wanna be. You just gotta believe that you can and get to work. It takes huge emotional-labor to do it. Things that are rare and valuable in life have a cost, a price associated with them. Life-purpose is a strategy that makes you love to pay that high-cost. Pretty nifty eh? Can you appreciate the brilliance of life purpose as a strategy now? You're taking massive action -- but it's fun and exciting not grindy and boring. And you are getting your whole life together too -- like a rising tide raising all boats floating thereon. So, life purpose is a win for you and a win for society if done right. It's really an amazing personal development strategy that cleans-up your entire life in every-which way, financially and otherwise, if *actually* implemented over the long-term. But you gotta design it right and you then gotta live it! There ain't no easy, primrose path to the dream-life. If there were, that would be the norm, and it's not. Dream-lives are rare and valuable indeed. Videos on point to watch:

Like something where you systematically re-program in the opposite of your key limiting beliefs and visualize the opposite of your sabotaging visualizations. I feel like because this practice is not systematized right, it is not being used to its fullest-potential as a personal development tool. This could improve positive-thinking enormously -- a hypothesis I am making here.

Is this some kind of new art? Avant-garde? Sort of like a core-dump poetry. Hey man -- maybe it's sayin' somethin' about us man! Positive thinking at work. Nice name by the way!

Watch this video, it's great.

We don't "know". I agree. To say one way or the other would be to introduce an existentially false belief into reality as a fantasy.

I don't know what you are projecting onto me with this, but it has a creepy vibe to it. I don't recall "shutting you down", those are your highly-charged words coming out of nowhere apparently. It also sounds like victim thinking to me, like I pulled your internet cable or something. This is a discussion Forum where people discuss things. Not to belabor this but -- you can also ways respond back to anything I or anybody else says on here. Nothin's stopping ya but your own limiting-beliefs! And that's your own issue not my issue or anybody else's issue. All problems come from the inside, but we want to look for them on the outside. Also you shouldn't be getting emotionally-triggered from anything said on here. My posts come from the heart, and if that doesn't work for you, just ignore them. I appreciate your commentary so I don't share your opinion about your posts. I rather enjoy them. No hard feelings on my end. Video on point to watch:

It helps you gain the emotional leverage you need to face head-on the emotional-labor required to take actions. I use it from time to time. Especially when I have a big procrastination I need to bust through. Another technique is to visualize yourself starting the project. I procrastinate much less now because I am on top of all my work. But that took me a long time to get handled. Procrastination used to be my best friend.

Some notes from my visualization practice this morning. A. Visualize all the big changes you are going to make in your like and what's going to be like. 5 mins. Today I focused on Morning Routine. 1. Morning Routine. 2. Work Routine. 3. Evening Routine/ Sleep. B. Visualize the results of achieving your life-purpose. 5 mins. Today I really didn't hone on one specific topic, I just let my mind wander. 1. Giving my philosophy to the world. 2. Being financially well off. 3. Living a virtuous, full, charged life.

You're going to be doing personal development work for the rest of your life. It's a marathon not a race. Don't expect huge results fast or cheaply. But if you commit to doing this work and fall in love with it, your life will improve dramatically over the long-term. Set some goals and visualize the hard work that you're gonna do to implement them. It's gonna take emotional-labor. This is not some pop-a-pill and problem solved stuff. You are after value that is rare and valuable in life. Value must be fought for, it never falls in your lap or comes easily, not sustainably. So, take baby-steps and don't overwhelm yourself. Approach this like learning how to play the guitar. It will take years of daily practice to get really good at playing the guitar. But remember the work of art here is you, your dream-life! How exciting is that? Visualize what you will get from doing this work in the long term. Let that inspire and motivate you today. Get on the path to become a personal development junkie. Set proper expectations now to avoid later frustrations which could cause you to quit. You wanna avoid quitting at all costs. So take baby-steps. Pre-algebra must happen before calculus can happen and it takes a couple of years of study and hard work to bridge the gap between those two textbooks. Same thing applies to Personal Development work. You are at the pre-algebra stage now. Do where you are really well. That's the best you can do. Your bright future lies ahead.

The best Self-inquiry is to do do-nothing meditation for 1 hour per day and just look. The heavily contemplative self-Inquiry stuff is important too, it's not an either/or it's a both. But Just meditate and look. Inquire by looking. This is huge. Just meditate and be aware. At the right time, just naturally inquire -- What is the mind? Where are these thoughts coming from? Why is the mind flapping around? What is causing that effect? Etc. Dont be too neurotic about Self-Inquiry. This would be like looking at yourself in the mirror with your nose pressed-up against it for hours. Take a more leisurely, harmonious approach. You are looking and seeing what you are. Don't rush this. It's a lifelong process. Enlightenment is a gradual transformation.

Enlightenment is about realizing that all beliefs are existentially false by being the result of that not merely conceiving the result of that. Don't worry about experiences. Work with the root. This is why Self-Inquiry is so important. Experiences are the result of doing this work, not what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not a far-out state. Enlightenment is being reality all the time. See -- our realities are augmented by our thought-stories which introduce a lot of fantasy into our "reality". Enlightenment is being reality, but also seeing through the added-on fantasies very acutely, like the magician sees through the illusion of all his magic-tricks. You don't need drugs for enlightened being. People do drugs to explore the shit out of being, to *research being* by *being it*. Enlightenment research is done by BE-ing. But all you need is sober being to be enlightened. Everything else is just higher *research*. Just like you really only need a JD or Juris Doctor degree to practice law but if you had a deeper interest in law you could get the LLM degree with is the Master of Laws degree. But that degree is optional. All you really need to practice law is the JD. Same distinction can be made in enlightenment. All I want is the JD for now. Others on here are pursuing the LLM Degree. Some people on here are still in Undergrad, ya know! It's a mix. You gotta understand that Leo is *researching* the shit out of enlightenment at the Ph.D. level. You need to get to the Bachelor's Degree first. Don't think Enlightenment is a single thing or state or destination. It's an evolution, a life-long transformation. You just need to get on the path in the best way from where you are right now.

If you don't attach to an identity, just have fun playing the roles. Nothing is you anyway. None of those emotions are yours. I guess it's an empirical question to see how acting screws with your egoic-self. I get it. Maybe it causes your personality to get screwed up or maybe it causes some neurosis or depression. But maybe those are just neurotic limiting-beliefs! Assume that and get in there and tinker and just find out. Screw what anybody says without actually having done this, it's all made-up or hearsay. It has no real value to you. It's just talk without any foundation. What value does that give to you really? Nada. Your ego is looking to cling to some kind of unfounded belief when what you really need to do is go find out by actually doing it. Or, maybe talk to someone who is very analogous to your situation who has *actually done it* and whose opinion has been established by you as highly-credible. Don't solidify some limiting-belief based-off what you hear said casually. Not when it comes to your career. It's too important, especially if you already noticed you have a passion for it. Your ego is looking for a way to sabotage you with limiting-beliefs, remember that. You considering pushing your comfort-zone spooks the ego. This is why most people never get out of second-gear in life. The lower-self wants physical and emotional comfort, and it will try to murder all your higher-self's aspirations. An enlightened person realizes that everything we do is role-playing anyway. That's all we do is play roles. All day long. We play the roles of our little egoic, earth-bound selves. What do we do or think about that is not role-playing? I can't think of anything. I see the growth-potential in acting as a profession and I see how it could go with an enlightened life not against it. After all, what the hell is genuineness anyway? It's ego. The higher-self, the virtuous-self is ego. Reality just is. People take Maya so seriously. Play around with it a bit! Let's transform our verse into song! We need to lighten-up in our Maya lives. Purpose is great, being good and imitating Jesus is great, but man, sometimes I think we just need to relish the illusion and realize it ain't all that serious. We make it serious. Acting is right in line with this realization. Just don't compromise your values too much. Obviously everybody has to compromise a little from time to time. If our higher-selves ran this place, we would all be hoping for death because the spice-of-life would be conspicuously AWOL. Just maintain the proper dynamic-balance between Yin and Yang to harmonize with the Tao and you'll do great no matter what you do. This is how some people practice their spirituality. Much less cerebral than we do. I saw this when I was in Florence. Sing -- Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama. Rama Rama, Hare Hare. The Hare Krishna Mantra is like a baby calling for its father, but in this case the Father is God and we are the baby. It is a re-union with God. How does this "singing and dancing" role-playing compare to our "staring at our PCs" role-playing? It's a distinction without a difference. But even that belief must eat itself. Reality just is.

Notice when you meditate there are moments when the mind disappears. Really take note of that WITH YOUR BEING not with your conceptual mind. Really start to see that the mind is not you. See and feel and be that very profoundly. Start to be able to distance yourself from the mind like a bird-watcher watching a bird through binoculars. Don't try to force anything. Just be aware of things. Let the monkey-mind chatter away in your ear like an ornery little brother that you will eventually learn to half-ignore. It's like yeah yeah yeah, what? So sorry, I wasn't listening. Haha. It really becomes like that. It's not that you kill the mind it's just that you change the way that you relate to it. Like instead of kicking somebody's ass you just learn how to ignore them. But don't take any of these stories literally, they're just intuition-pumps for you to chew-on before you do your Self-Inquiry work and take a look for real by being the Truth. What is the mind? How does the ego want to cling to the mind? Am I the mind? What is the difference between the mind and awareness? What is the difference between thoughts and the mind? What is the difference between beliefs and thoughts? What are thoughts? What are sounds? Do sounds occur in space and time? Etc. See? All fascinating Self-Inquiry questions to explore. Here's some more: What is the ego? Am I my body and/or brain? Do I have an identity? Does that identity have stable properties? What is this identity? What are these properties? Do I have a stable personality? Could I completely change my personality? What is stopping me from completely changing my personality? What is holding me back in life from doing what my higher-self knows is the right thing to do? Are these obstacles fixed or can they be removed? What are these obstacles really and what are they made of? What is a limiting-belief? How does a limiting-belief gain its traction? How do thoughts limit me? What is permitting thoughts to limit me? How can I unhook limiting-beliefs from me? What is asking these questions? What is aware of all of this? Is that awareness something inside me or outside me? What is a conceptual distinction? How does a conceptual distinction relate to awareness? How does a theory relate to the subject matter or the result that the theory pertains to? Can the ego be destroyed? Do I die when the body and brain die? Does awareness die when the body and brain die? Does the mind die when the body and brain die? What is the relation between awareness and the mind, the relation between awareness and the body, and the relation between awareness and the brain? What is the relation between awareness and you? What is a relation? What is a question? What am I? And so on and on. Fall in love with Self-Inquiry if you wanna make progress with enlightenment. In enlightenment, theory is just scaffolding, pointers to do the Self-Inquiry work. Enlightenment is not a theory. Enlightenment is transformation. The ego wants beliefs and theories, but that's not what you want. You want transformation. Clinging too much to the theory-scaffolding is a huge trap. All beliefs and all theories are existentially false, But only use this as a guide. Don't even cling to this as a belief. The way you look at thoughts will dramatically change from the way you look at them now with enlightenment. If you're stuck in the Rationalist Paradigm, you're not gonna get this. It's just gonna sound wrong to you. Watch all the videos I attached below. Separate yourself from the Mind-Matrix. It will still be there, but your awareness of the Truth will change how you attach to things at the being level (I'm not talking about attachment to beliefs or thoughts here). Remember, this is about being differently not about thinking differently. This should change how you BE, how you are. You are looking for a being-transformation not a belief-transformation. These words are just scaffolding to get you to be differently. And that's why you just need to get in there, open up the hood, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, and tinker-around inside your being. That's what Self-Inquiry is all about. Everything else is just pre-algebra compared to Self-Inquiry. This is so hard to explain too because we operate on the "knowing = belief" paradigm. Here we need to change that paradigm to the "knowing = being" paradigm for enlightenment work. You gotta literally jump from one paradigm to another one here, from one bubble to another bubble. And there's no easy, primrose path to do this. You gotta grab your druthers and make that discontinuous flyin'-leap from one paradigm to the next one! How many people can actually do this? How many people will do this? Videos on point to watch:

People don't like to have their precious beliefs challenged. It's the collateral-damage of playing the role of the philosopher. I get punched all the time. Oy oy oy! I can take it. Socrates was killed. The philosopher questions everything and doesn't cling to any beliefs tightly without good cause determined by a particular context. And the true philosopher has the balls to publically question things even when it puts his own life in danger. The true philosopher is only beholden to truth and to nothing else. And even under the threat of gun and knife, he will give his life in service of his only master, truth itself. Most people will not do this work in life and that's why they don't play the role of the philosopher. It's a special-calling that a person might have in life. You have to be ok with being the party-pooper, with potentially the entire world staring-daggers at you with crest-fallen face. Probably not a good life-purpose for somebody who cares about what other people think about them haha. Note it. The ego wants to make hearth-and-home using beliefs, like a homeless man building his castle out of cardboard boxes.

Watch Emerald's great video on point.

Do you know (by belief) or do you know (by being)? That is the question. Can you tell the difference? This has huge ramifications for being the Truth. You are half-right. Why would you pooh-pooh this crucial point? Not to belabor this, but what I am saying here has big BEING ramifications -- the potential removal of a limiting-belief/ dream-killer. All beliefs must be examined because they're all existentially false. This is a *discovery* I recently made in my self-inquiry work, not some mere mental-masturbation exercise. And I had mind to share it on here, that's all. I could have kept it to myself. But I wanted some legit feedback. And I wanted to share the insight. One of the greatest things enlightenment did for me was to unscrew all my limiting-beliefs out of my psyche. Listen to Leo's Dream-killers videos for more info about limiting-beliefs. They're in his audio downloads section of his website. There are 21 videos and they are all excellent. No free-will is a limiting-belief. That's the upshot. It's existentially false. And the belief in free-will is existentially false too. Reality just is. All of our distinctions (including all of our beliefs) about the Absolute are egoic monkey-mind limiting-beliefs. And yes, even this belief must eat itself. You anticipated this correctly! I'm glad. Know by being the Truth not by conceiving the Truth. This is SO hard to explain in oral or written discourse. And I give props to Leo for trying to *teach* this to people. It is super-hard to communicate in thoughts because thoughts are the problem. It's also frustrating as hell to write about it, but it must be done. That's our only way to ever come to *learn* it. We pass the ladder to each other like a baton in one of those running races. Use the ladder to get out of your own hole and then pass it on to the next person. And don't marry the ladder! A cowboy doesn't marry his horse. (Last sentence borrowed from one of Leo's videos.) So, you're right. Blah blah. But blah blah is the ladder. Without the ladder y'aint ever gonna get out of the hole! The ladder is necessary but ultimately expendable. Someone else buys the ladder from you at your own garage-sale with wide-eyes and bushy-tail. And you say, take it! I no longer need it.

If you're asking us I'm already suspicious. You should know yourself deeply, am I right? What is your life-purpose? Give us a succinct statement of it. Have it come out of your soul-portal. Life-purpose has nothing to do with anybody else. What is your calling? What is yours and yours alone to hone and deliver to the world? What are you willing to work your ass off to do in this life? Leo is irrelevant to that. Life-purpose isn't some Luke-warm thing. It's your life's PASSION. It's gotta be. That's what will give you the motivation to get your whole life handled and then some. Don't rush this.

Lao Tsu, more modernly written Laozi

@Mr Memposito This video shows why it's important to do your research before criticizing someone publically like this. Sand carelessly thrown in the wind comes back to the thrower's eye. If you don't have something nice to say about someone . . . make sure you say it very well! Haha. Don't quote me.

I'm seeing now that I need to visualize my life like at least 2 years out. And that visualization needs to be detailed and definite. And I gotta review it every day. Visualization is the sustainable strategy for making every mundane task that you do during your daily-routine make sense and seem interesting. After all, you see why you're doing it and the exciting things it is leading to and building to. Like looking through a calculus textbook when you are taking intermediate algebra and dreaming about the interrelations and exciting journey ahead. And also appreciating all that will need to be learned through hard-work to arrive at the calculus textbook. The why of everything you're doing then becomes clear. We need to create this effect in our lives. And I think visualization is a way to do it. I'm gonna rig in something and play around with it myself.

This is going into my daily reading book. Damn good quote.

Sounds like you are ready to do some real personal development work. Congrats! This is where you're gonna see the results that all the theory is promising. This is where your life is gonna start to improve dramatically if you deep-dive and become a personal development junkie and start to implement the below modules. Get passionate about the potential of this to your life. 1. Be a creator in your life/ you are the music-maker and you are the dreamer of dreams. Become the artist where you are the art-work. Not painting, not drawing, not music, not poetry -- but YOU, all of you, your life, your contribution! Turn you into beautiful art. And focus primarily on that as an artist. This is your #1 priority in life, don't lose sight of this ball. 2. Do some enlightenment work to transcend all your limiting-beliefs. Leo calls these dream-killers. You can listen to his dream-killer videos if you log onto his website, there are 21 of them and they are excellent. They are in the audio-downloads section. Enlightenment work also dramatically reduces your fears, anxieties, neuroses, etc. and makes you much more emotionally-grounded. 3. Do some life-purpose work to turn your "have tos" into "want tos". When your dream is alligned with your work, the work becomes something you enjoy doing and thus becomes easy. Try to align your life-purpose with contribution to maximize the motivation super-charging effect that life-purpose gives you. Deep-down we all yearn deeply to make a great contribution with our lives and our works. It's in your heart of hearts to contribute something to the world. 4. Tame your elephant/ program the sub-conscious mind. The conscious mind is like a rider on top of an elephant which has a mind of its own. We can call the elephant the subconscious-mind. You need to get the ornery elephant on the same page as the rider by practing meditation, visualizations, affirmations, and by baby-stepping daily-routines into your schedule that implement your goals. 5. Be a great field-general in your life/ be a great strategist. Clarify your goals. Read your mission-statement every morning. Clarify your action-plans to achieve these goals. Break-down the work into stuff that can be fitted into a daily-routine and done daily. The way you build a giant, beautiful cathedral is by taking consistent action on it every day, one brick at a time. 6. Dump all your distractions and addictions. They are robbing you of focus, energy, and heart, which you need to be concentrated like a laser-beam on your compelling life-purpose which is your cause in life, that which you are willing to bleed and to die for. Baby-step removing this *shit* from your life so you don't get overwhelmed. Clean it out slowly but steadily.